Florida has learned from past voter purges, secretary of state says

Published: Tuesday, October 8, 2013 at 1:21 p.m.

Last Modified: Tuesday, October 8, 2013 at 1:21 p.m.

Round two of a controversial effort to remove noncitizens from Florida’s voter rolls will be more “credible” after state officials “learned from the mistakes” of a bungled 2012 voter purge, Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner said during a visit to Sarasota Tuesday.

“Without a process that has integrity we cannot proceed,” Detzner, the state’s top elections official, told about 60 people during a public forum at the Sarasota County Terrace Building.

Detzner and a deputy presented their new approach to removing noncitizen voters and were quizzed by audience members and elections supervisors from throughout the region.

Most of the discussion focused on technical aspects of the plan, which will rely on a federal database the state did not have access to last year. But the sharp partisan divide on the issue also was apparent. Critics have accused state leaders of trying to suppress minority voters who lean heavily Democratic.

“We’re going to continue to monitor the process closely to ensure fair elections and make sure people who are eligible to vote are able to,” said Rita Ferrandino, chairwoman of the Sarasota County Democratic Party, after Detzner’s presentation.

Deep flaws in the lists of alleged noncitizen voters generated by state and local elections officials last year led to widespread concerns about the process.

Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent had her staff examine jury duty forms to create a list of suspected noncitizen voters.

Dent’s office found 12 people who indicated they were not citizens on the jury form but were registered to vote.

Letters were sent out. Five of the voters provided proof of citizenship immediately, but most did not respond quickly enough. Dent ended up removing seven people from the voting roll. Six later turned out to be citizens.

Only one of the 12 was not a citizen, though he had never voted.

Florida elections officials later sent Dent a list with 14 names — all different from the 12 identified by her staff — of suspected noncitizens registered to vote in the county.

The state used Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles data to develop the list, but supervisors across the state found the information was riddled with errors and the effort to identify noncitizen voters died down.

Dent said that state officials seem to be “making progress” in developing a better system, but she still plans to be careful going forward.

“I’m not taking anyone off I’m not 100 percent sure on,” Dent said.

Florida elections officials will be able to access the U.S. government’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database.

The federal system monitors citizen status to determine eligibility for government benefits.

State leaders sued to obtain access to the database, which is considered more comprehensive than previous methods of determining citizenship.

“SAVE will be different,” said Maria Matthews, director of the Florida Division of Elections.

Yet Matthews conceded that the new system could still falsely identify people as noncitizens. The federal database may not always be updated immediately when legal residents become naturalized citizens, she said.

“Is it foolproof? No, obviously it’s not,” Matthews said.

Elections officials also plan to contact those who conduct citizenship ceremonies in Florida for updated information. And instead of simply relying on database analysis to generate the lists of alleged noncitizen voters, Detzner said there will be more “case management” by elections workers to dig deeper when a person’s citizenship status is in question.

“One case at a time,” he said.

Nancy Hale Goethe, the voter service chair for the League of Women Voters of Sarasota County, said her organization has been concerned that a flawed effort to purge the voter rolls of noncitizens could hurt turnout on Election Day.

Goethe felt better after listening to Tuesday’s presentation.

“I think it’s a much better process than it was last year,” she said.

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